The Cup I Drink, You Will Drink
29th Sunday of the Year
Listen to this homily on Spotify.
I said this past week on the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch that, when we celebrate the Eucharist, we tend to focus all our attention on the specific moment when the Eucharist is made: the ‘words of institution’ which change the gifts of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Lord: This is my Body, this is my Blood. Without bread or wine, without those words, and without a priest to take the gifts and speak the words, there is no Eucharist. If you attend Mass with beautiful music, a fine homily, and eloquent prayers yet without this specific moment, you haven’t attended Mass at all. The Cross has not been made present; the sacrifice has not been offered; and the Lord has not come down from heaven to our altar.
When we return to the teaching of the early Church Fathers, like St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred sometime in the beginning of the 2nd century, we are reminded that there was a time when ‘what made the Eucharist’ was a much larger category than two declarative sentences spoken by a priest over bread and wine. It was, in fact, during the Middle Ages, when belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was called into question that Western theology became hyper-fixated on the exact moment when Christ’s became really, fully, and substantially present; but in the first millennium of Church history, before Christ’s Real Presence was called into question, the moment of consecration would not have seemed as separated out from the rest of the liturgy. In short, the entire celebration—start to finish—was seen as the Eucharist; and more to the point I want to make here, the ancient Christians considered each person’s particular involvement in the liturgy integral to the Eucharist being celebrated. Not only is the Eucharist offered by the priest; in a real sense, it is offered, too, by the people.
In his Letter to the Romans, Ignatius writes of his impending martyrdom with wonderfully evocative Eucharistic imagery: “Allow me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ” (ch. 4). What Ignatius means is that, just as the bread that is transformed into the Eucharist must first be picked as grain, crushed, and baked with fire in order to become the sacrifice that Christ renders of himself to the Father, so he, too, must be picked, crushed, and set afire so that his life may be offered in sacrifice to almighty God.
St. Ignatius’ witness is extraordinary, but what he teaches is not reserved for the spiritual elite. It’s telling in the Gospel when Jesus says to James and John, in response to their ambitious request to sit at the Lord’s right and left, “The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” What Christ teaches is that those who follow Christ are baptized into him. We are given a share in the cup he drinks, the cup of the new and eternal covenant of his Blood, poured out for the life of the world. We are to become all that he is, in a word, the perfect sacrifice offered to the Father.
The readings this Sunday all point toward Jesus’ priestly identity and mission: the servant who justifies, the great high priest who has passed into the heavens, the one who came to serve and give his life as a ransom. Yet the Lord teaches through the examples of James and John, repeated through the example of saints like Ignatius of Antioch, that, though he is the one, perfect priest, his priesthood is a gift that he shares with those who belong to him. He has baptized us. He has offered us the cup. He invites us to enter into his life which, on the whole, is the one, perfect sacrifice offered to the Father for the salvation of the world.
With this in mind, I want to make two points about Christ’s priesthood as it pertains to us:
The first applies to everyone. Think about the priesthood—specifically, the priesthood of Jesus Christ in which he has invited you to participate. You are a priest by your baptism: one who is called to offer all that you are on the altar as a sacrifice through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ to the praise and glory of God the Father. Think about the Eucharist that you are becoming through your daily trials—how the Lord allows you to be crushed, broken, tested, and proved, so that you can become the pure, holy bread that is pleasing to him. Don’t spurn or try to avoid the lions in your life. Like St. Ignatius, run toward them, because they are the means that will make you into the person God desires you to be. And when you come to Mass, see yourself being laid upon this altar, taken into the Lord’s holy and venerable hands, and lifted up to the Father in thanksgiving for what he has done in your life and with your life. In the lovely phrase of St. Augustine, “Become what you receive”—be the Eucharist you celebrate.
The second applies only to young men. Think about the priesthood—specifically, the priesthood of Jesus Christ in which he might be inviting you to participate as a ministerial priest of his Church. Without ordained priests, the priesthood of all the faithful cannot be realized. If there is no one to stand at this altar, take the gifts, and speak over them the Lord’s words, then there is no Eucharist, no Cross, no sacrifice, and no Lord in our midst. The faithful cannot be fed and neither can they offer the sacrifice of their lives in union with the sacrifice of Christ that the priest alone makes present. When you come to Mass, ask the Lord whether he is inviting you to stand in his place. He may be calling you to lay down your life and take up his. He may desire for you to take into your hands the precious offering of his holy Church and raise it again and again from the altar in praise and thanksgiving. And if there is even the slightest possibility in your mind that that call may be there, don’t hesitate for a minute to act on it. A vocation to the priesthood is a holy thing. It takes great prayer and discernment to know it’s there for sure, but to ignore the call because you never stopped to investigate a thought or desire of becoming a priest, would be a great tragedy. Think about the priesthood. Consider the possibility. Reach out to me if you think you might be hearing the call.
The Church needs priests—priests of both ‘kinds’: priests by baptism and priests by ordination. Each is a sharing in the one priesthood of Christ in which we, as the Church, offer with him the sacrifice he offered once and for all upon Calvary.
In a few moments, we will again focus our attention on the moment of consecration—and it is right and just so to do. But this moment in which bread and wine are transformed needs to expand to capture our entire lives. Everything that we are, everything that we do, is meant to be caught up in this great mystery which the Lord left us and commanded us to celebrate in his memory. Let us pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father. Amen.
Homily given October 20, 2024 at Mount St. Mary’s University